Masterminding the Marathon

Here's how different coaches' philosophies can interact to create your perfect plan for a PR.

MARATHON-SPECIFIC WORK

If you wonder why world records continue to fall and more men and women are breaking 2:05 and 2:20 than ever before, Canova offers a simple answer: specific endurance. "When we talk about extension of specific endurance, we're developing your ability to run farther at a given pace," says Gavin Smith, Canova's assistant in Iten, Kenya. "Once we get to this phase, we're not trying to get faster. We're trying to hold the same pace longer."

This principle of doing progressively higher amounts of work at goal pace has been at play in the shorter events for decades, but its application to the marathon didn't begin in earnest until the Italian coaches of the 1980s. Much of this hesitancy came from popular thinking that considered marathon-pace training a "dead zone" that wouldn't produce the same results as shorter, intense intervals or gentler long runs. Two Americans who questioned that logic were Steve Spence, 1991 world championship marathon bronze medalist, and Joe Vigil, the legendary Adams State University coach and author who mentored Deena Kastor to an Olympic marathon bronze. Today it's seen in elite programs spanning from Portland, Ore., all the way to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where national coaches have warmly embraced Canova's principles.

That doesn't mean that everyone accepts the idea of marathon-pace work; traditional Lydiard followers are particularly leery. Moller says that practicing race pace is beside the point, because racing is something entirely different than training. "What you're doing is making a quantum leap at race time," Moller says. "If you're peaking on race day, you can't expect to be able to reach those times while you've still got the load on while you're training hard."

Most coaches today disagree with that sentiment and have added specific endurance intervals into their training plans. Each coach who was interviewed now includes runs of 10–14 miles at goal marathon race pace in their plans; some, like the Hansons, make it a point to include these types of runs on a weekly basis. When Janet Cherobon-Bawcom, a 2012 Olympian in the 10,000m, first asked Daniels to coach her, she was in awe of the marathon-pace workouts. "It was overwhelming to look at [the schedule] on paper," she says. "It took doing the workouts for me to trust him. The more I did it, the more it gave me confidence that I could do a good marathon."

Coaches working with world-class athletes are looking for more than just confidence. They want mastery of this pace in their pupils. During the final 10 weeks of marathon prep, coaches like Canova, who espouse the principles of marathon specificity, will have each workout fall within a few percentage points of marathon pace. These can take the form of 10 × 1600m; 20–30K at alternating paces; longer intervals on the road with short, quick recoveries; or the aforementioned 24-mile long run near marathon pace. Each workout seeks to extend the amount of a time a runner can maintain marathon pace. The capstone is the "special block," a workout containing 20–26 miles of running at marathon pace separated into two workouts on a single day. The special block also teaches the body to burn its almost unlimited stores of fat more efficiently, says Simmons, a point that was driven home when Canova told him his athletes never ingest any carbohydrates on the race course.

"During those workouts you can see the muscle cells are switching back and forth between glycogen and fat, teaching the body to use them at the same time, as opposed to glycogen first and fat secondly," Simmons says, noting this keeps athletes from hitting the wall. "We want to be able to use glycogen at the end and finish at a very fast pace."

This carb-free race-day strategy might work for Canova's elite runners. And if you're running at slower speeds, strenuous marathon-pace workouts will increase your fitness and may make you more efficient in burning fat at higher intensities. But proceed with caution; most research indicates these workouts are probably not a substitute for taking in carbohydrates during a race.

LACTATE THRESHOLD

Of all the elements involved in marathon training, lactate threshold (LT)–or the point at which you start accumulating more lactic acid in your bloodstream than can be used as fuel–is perhaps the most fluid. There is strong debate today among exercise scientists and coaches regarding what effect raising the LT has on marathon performance. In the meantime, coaches agree there are two excellent methods to increase your LT.

TEMPO RUNS

The simplest and most efficient way to raise your LT, tempo runs traditionally include spending 20 to 40 minutes running at or near LT pace, roughly the pace you can sustain for an hour-long race. "Threshold training is either the first or second most important thing, along with the long run, in marathon training," Pfitzinger says. "It's a matter of getting it in the right balance." For Pfitzinger, that balance means including a tempo run every two weeks for the majority of a marathon buildup.

Tempo run guidelines have changed in recent years. Recent lab tests have found that runs slightly faster than LT pace are more efficient in raising the lactate threshold, while slightly slower but longer tempo runs may be of great use for marathoners. Coaches have also started adding hills and heart rate guidelines to what was once a time-based workout run only on flat, well-marked courses.

CRUISE INTERVALS

Made popular by Daniels almost 20 years ago, cruise intervals transform tempo runs into long intervals at LT pace with short recoveries in between. The Hansons relish these runs and offer a steady diet of workouts like 3 × 2 miles with several minutes' recovery in between. These recovery intervals allow runners to spend more time at LT pace, providing a greater stimulus for beginners and advanced runners alike.

For athletes looking to push the envelope, cruise intervals and their infinite variations allow that opportunity. Daniels offers a brutal 5-4-3-2-1-mile LT-pace workout that lets the athlete spend 15 miles at LT pace in a single session, something that would be physically impossible in a tempo run. Canova offers a similarly challenging 4 × 5K session that begins at marathon pace in the first interval, progresses to LT pace in the middle segments, and drops below LT pace over the last 3 miles.

INTERVALS AND REPEATS

Intervals and short repetitions at speeds faster than 10K pace are a component of most marathon programs, even though coaches consider them to be the least important part of marathon preparation. These workouts are not without merit: They build neuromuscular development and efficiency, improve VO2 max and, for fall marathoners, often flow seamlessly out of a summer season spent racing 5Ks and 10Ks.

The Hansons discovered this for themselves back in the 1990s, when the local runners they coached ran a full slate of shorter races before turning their attention to the Bobby Crim 10-miler in August and the Grand Rapids and Detroit marathons in September and October. Although the schedule is almost a complete inversion of the Lydiard system, the Hansons found their athletes had great success following this model.

This inversion is no longer unique to the Hansons group. Four to six months out from a race, the Canova group focuses on speed, VO2 max work and explosive circuit routines, which they consider vital to developing a runner but nonspecific to marathon training. The workouts in this period are significantly shorter than the marathon workouts and are run closer to 5K pace (20 × 400m or 6 × 1K, for instance). When marathon training fully begins, the speed work all but disappears, save for some short hills and fartleks.

Intermittent interval workouts appear to be enough for athletes who like to race competitively at other distances leading up to a marathon. In Daniels' system, intervals at 5K pace appear only once every three weeks, yet that hasn't hindered Cherobon-Bawcom from winning eight national titles in the past three years. "For me it has worked so well," she says. "It has proven that even though I was training for a marathon, I could still run some fast, shorter stuff. The unique part of his program is it just makes you stronger. Whenever you hit any kind of speed, you're ready for the shorter [races]."

Including this type of work may also benefit a marathoner's overall fitness in the final weeks leading up to a race, says Pfitzinger. "Volume is starting to decrease, so the runner can handle the faster work and still recover in a reasonable timeframe," he says. "The benefit is both physiological and psychological in making marathon race pace feel easier and also providing a cushion, so if the marathon is run at an uneven pace, the runner can tolerate [pace changes]."